May 1, 2004

Official Star Wars Fan Club

So Hyperspace has mutated into the fan club. Which is great, unless you live outside of North America. Yes once again Lucasfilm is ignoring most of the world.

For those in North America I think that it is probably a good thing. For a little bit more money ($39.95) you now get....

A years Hyperspace subscription

Six issues of Star Wars Insider

Membership kit (whatever that is)

Discounts and early purchases at StarWarsShop.com

Access to member-only fan events

Interaction with your local and global fan community (sounds dubious)

Also in my mind it just seems a bit better paying to join a fanclub than paying to see part of a website, which I sort of feel morally opposed to. But check out the international fan club and you find that it's basically just Hyperspace still. You get event benefits if you go to Comic-Con or Celebration, but guess what? They're in the US. A select number of countries (U.K., France, Spain, Mexico and Germany) have their own fan clubs but take a look at the UK page and it's a bit vague. Basically it says that you can subscribe to Star Wars magazine which costs extra, but doesn't really tell you how to join the fan club. It's all very confusing. After a bit of googling I found more details here, but it's not very inspiring.

When is Lucasfilm going to stop treating the rest of the world like second class citizens. George, if you can hear me (I'm using The Force), sort it out.